Amid the altogether glowing launch reception for Baldur's Gate 3, which went on to win just about every GOTY award under the sun and which we also put at the summit of the best games of 2023, there were a fair few reviews and posts from long-time CRPG fans who argued that Larian's take on the series felt more like a Divinity game than a Baldur's Gate game. That's not necessarily calling it bad – the Divinity games are beloved, after all – but perhaps it just doesn't feel like the Baldur's Gates of old. And I remember similar conversations around Baldur's Gate 3's early access launch about three years ago.
Solo board games are a salvation from an online world
22.12.2023 - 16:19 / polygon.com
The year 2020 was an interesting one for our planet, and an incredibly boring one for me personally. By day I was working remotely from my apartment, managing one of the pop-up shelters created by the U.K. government for its unhoused population. By night I was locked away in my bedroom-come-office staring at the same few glowing screens and in desperate need of anything that might take my eyes off the news cycle. That’s when I discovered solo board gaming.
Like many who continued to work remotely through the COVID-19 pandemic, I struggled to extract joy from the same screens that caused me so much anxiety during the day. I’d always enjoyed the more social aspects of traditional board gaming, but without the ability to spend time with other people the entire hobby disappeared practically overnight. It wasn’t until several months into lockdown when hourslong walks in the park were interrupted by the cold that I first tried a solo board game. I sat at my kitchen table, a baffling array of cardboard and dice laid out before me, and found myself entranced.
Solo games have been around in some form or another for hundreds of years. Puzzles and solitaire card games are well known boredom busters, but in recent decades a micro community of passionate designers began to create games that drew from puzzles and traditional board games to make something entirely distinct.
The first solo board games emerged from the wargaming scene of the ’80s and ’90s. Seemingly inaccessible by design, these early one-player games typically centered on micromanaging units across a historically accurate setting, and their legacy lives on in titles by publishers such as Dan Verssen Games and GMT. Later on, in the 2000s, online forums helped give rise to print-and-play games, which became an important pre-Kickstarter launching pad for many successful titles. As homemade games became more accessible, solo games specifically designed for just one player began to find their own niche. In 2007, Zombie in my Pocket became a cult hit in the print-and-play community. ZIMP is simple — players search rooms, grab items, avoid zombies, and try to survive long enough for a cure. The game became one of the first and best examples of a solo game and spawned dozens of imitators and variants.
By the early 2010s, board gaming had grown in popularity and a new wave of modern classics emerged.Ticket to Ride, Settlers of Catan, and Carcassonne each sold hundreds of thousands of copies around the world, becoming new staples of the hobby — “gateway games” that helped bring in new players, in turn fueling the present-day ascent of solo experiences. But none of them were launched with single-player variants in mind.
Automa rulesets, sometimes called
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polygon.com
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pcgamer.com
05.01.2024 / 17:11
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thesixthaxis.com
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gamesradar.com
03.01.2024 / 18:26
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polygon.com
03.01.2024 / 18:03
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screenrant.com
03.01.2024 / 17:19
What New Games Are On Game Pass & What Games Are Leaving (January 2024)
Every month brings new games to the Xbox Game Pass service, with the regularly changing roster in Microsoft's subscription offering plenty of titles for different types of players to enjoy. These can be titles from acclaimed long-running franchises, and sometimes titles from Microsoft's first-party studios are added for no additional cost upon their launch, making Game Pass one of the better deals in gaming.
thesixthaxis.com
03.01.2024 / 16:57
These games are leaving Xbox Game Pass through January 2024
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polygon.com
03.01.2024 / 14:10
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boardgamequest.com
29.12.2023 / 18:09
Top 10 Board Games of 2023
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boardgamequest.com
27.12.2023 / 14:31
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